Objects in Interaction. Material Objects as Conversational Resources in Everyday Interaction
| Number: | P83 |
| Organizer: | Ayass, Ruth |
| Co-Organizer: | Karola Pitsch |
| Abstract: | |
| Considering interaction in a multimodal way, the central role of material objects becomes obvious soon. On the one hand, participants in interaction collaboratively orient towards objects; on the other hand objects are as well used as communicative resources by participants. Conversations can be generated by objects; and objects can get key issues of conversation. However objects are constituted as objects and provided with meaning via and through conversation. How objects are dealt with in interactions and how things are embedded in conversations is therefore a central problem for research in conversation analysis. Within the last years especially Workplace Studies analyzed how instruments, media and technical means are used by participants for acting and interacting. The use of complex technical apparatus or high-tech equipments in workplace settings like airport towers or emergency services often played an important role in these studies. We – in contrast – are less interested in high-tech settings, but primarily (but not exclusively) in the use of everyday objects and 'simple' instruments or devices in everyday interaction. In our panel we want to pursue the question how objects are used as communicative and interactive resources in everyday interaction, how they are embedded in ongoing conversation and how they are interactively constituted. The presentations will focus on sequences where objects are not just used as a topic of conversation, but where they are managed and negotiated within interaction. The analysis especially of familiar everyday objects (keys, spectacle cases, microwaves, remote controls, cups, paper, pencils etc.) as ´subjects´ in conversations will show how far there is orderliness (and probably also rules or routines in conversational processing). – How are then objects used as communicative resources? When and how are they introduced? Which conversational problems do they produce or do they solve? |
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